Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @10:20AM
from the try-saying-that-four-time-frantic dept.

hereisnowhy writes "A giant fossilized claw discovered in Germany belonged to an ancient sea scorpion that was much bigger than the average man, an international team of geologists and archaeologists reported Tuesday. In a report in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, the team said the claw indicates that sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenania was almost 2.5 meters long, making it the largest arthropod — an animal with a segmented body, jointed limbs and a hard exoskeleton — ever found. In the report, the authors said the scorpion exceeds previous size records for arthropods by almost half a meter."

Try double-man sized. That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights. 2 times what an American weighs.

It's all extrapolation. I bet it had a 46cm claw and a tiny disproportionate 4cm body with weedy legs, making it the early equivalent to the modern programmer and not the scary hideous gargantuan portrayed by the media.

Anyone who has seen Clash of the Titans knows that this story is just silly. It was clear that giant scorpions were all over the entire region. There were not too many other giant insects, but there were swamps and robot owls....this much is clear.

Obviously you watch too much TV, if you think the American weight average is double everyone else. Just because you see extreme cases all the time doesn't mean that everyone in America is like that. We don't have THAT many bulemic movie stars to throw the curve off that much...we're at least 3 or 4 times fatter than the rest of the world, not just double. Sheesh.

Whatever sentinent life showed up here a long time ago basically said "return to the ship and nuke the site from orbit"

And umpteen million years later, instead of water dwelling arthropods with no technology, who can't even support their own weight on dry land, they've got to deal with a horde of vicious hairless monkeys with nukes of our own. They're probably kicking themselves right now, assuming their anatomy allows such a feat.